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An Artisan Bread Making Movie - see a time-lapsed ovenspring !

An Artisan Bread Making Movie - see a time-lapsed ovenspring !

Hello,

This is my first post on the fresh loaf. I have been baking artisan style breads for a while now in my little Rofco hearth oven. I have made a little Youtube movie;

This film shows the making of a Pain Rustique French style bread based on a sourdough poolish (12 hour, 100%) with a high hydration dough, autolyse and stretch and fold technique in our Rofco hearth bread oven. We use German banneton's (baskets) for the final proofing. The recipe is an adaptation of the Pain Rustique (Jeffrey Hamelman's book ‘Bread') recipe, however I have changed it a lot to fit our taste, oven and European flour.

Enjoy the real life ‘oven spring' of the bread filmed in the oven. It starts at about 2:41 in the movie. We filmed the bread in the oven for 15 minutes and sped it up to fit in about 1 minute. So you will see the bread rise and brown in real time! It is really cool to see, do not miss it!

Note: The movie is filmed in full high definition quality (Full HD) so you can click on the ‘full screen' icon (second icon on the bottom right) of the YouTube movie and also the ‘HD' YouTube button and you will see it in very good quality, provided you have a broadband internet connection!

That blew me away! Absolutely extraordinary stuff! I envy you that heavy brick you got in your oven... How long do you preheat it?

Awesome site too, everything looks so enticing and delicious :)

PS: On the trifle files, you might want to correct the Norwegian name for the veiled farm girls: The correct spelling is "Tilslørte bondepiker" (one "k"). "Piker" is Norwegian for girls. Putting two k's in there, and you got a very foul word for the male sex organ...

The oven actually has 3 floors of brick, you can bake 6 breads in one go. The oven takes about 2 hours to heat up. The first hour it heats continuous and the second hour the heat spreads evenly through the bricks and oven only heats for a minute every 5 minutes or so. It is a Belgium handmade oven made by a small family ownded company for over 20 years (www.rofco.be).

We filmed the bread in the oven for 15 minutes and sped it up to fit in about 1 minute. During the final 30 minutes in the oven almost nothing visual happens anymore. The bread browns a little more, but not a lot. After the bread has been in the oven for about 8 to 9 minutes I switch off the oven and bake on a falling temperature of the residual heat of the big stones (3 thick slaps stones!). The oven is complete isolated with thick walls and rockwool.

Great video. I did raise a question in my mind; I seem to remember reading that salt and yeast should not be added at the same time (because the salt would kill the yeast). Obviously it work wonderfully in this example. Have I been mislead regarding the salt/yeast thing?

But that's one of the most common urban legends out there about mixing bread dough.

Salt will definitely slow down the fermentation process by inhibiting yeast activity. Somebody (years ago) expanded that into the idea that salt kills yeast, but this is not so. It has something to do with salt's hygroscopic (water-absorbing) nature, but we'd have to ask Debra Wink to chime in with a more thorough explanation of why this is so.

Hi Dan---Yes, I'm still here : ) And great little movie, pipo 1000! You've reminded me, I have a really nice time-lapse of a healthy starter rising; I may have to beg permission from the friend who made it, to post on TFL.

I have to agree with you, Dan---I think somebody somewhere "expanded" something. I guess that's really how myths get started, isn't it? Like the one about Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis being unique to the San Francisco area, for example. The organism was named after the place it was first discovered, as many are, when scientists started studying the "San Francisco Sourdough" process---AND---the bread there had a unique style. Somehow that expanded like a rumor (or condensed as it were) to, the organism is unique to the area, which is untrue.

And too, I think the salt thing is likewise based in fact, but a misunderstanding. High salt concentrations can kill yeast, by reducing water activity to an intolerable level. BUT, water is the key element here. When the yeast is dry, and the salt is dry, they have no way to interact. By the time the yeast is hydrated and the salt is dissolved, they are distributed throughout the dough. Obviously, you wouldn't want to let the yeast stand for long in direct contact with the salt, in the presense of moisture, but I see no problem with how it is mixed in this video, and the results speak for themselves.

So, we could generalize by stating that salt only endangers yeast when it is in high levels of concentration?

And while dry yeast and salt don't interact easily without water, what about cake yeast (fresh yeast)? Should we be careful to keep them separated when adding all ingredients at the beginning of the mix cycle, since cake yeast is somewhat moist?

I realize that most bakers can't even obtain cake yeast anymore, but it's still out there, and I know that some unrelated misconceptions about handling and storing dry yeast originated with handling fresh yeast.

Dan, I've never worked with fresh yeast, but I hope to if it appears for the holiday baking season. Many people think it tastes better; I'd like to see for myself. Seems like this is the only time of the year I ever see it anymore, and even so, not many stores stock it anymore.

Yes, I think that concentration is the issue with salt, which can easily reach high levels if it's dissolving in one spot. If you're putting everything into the mixer and turning it on right away, there probably is no problem. But, if there is likely to be a delay, better to play it safe and put the yeast to one side and the salt to the other, or hold them back until mixing starts.

What is your opinion on flavor of fresh vs dry? Do you taste a difference?-dw

I have never tasted a difference, but I think that's primarily because I try to use only as much yeast as necessary to leaven my bread. There are bakers -- both professional and non -- who choose to hedge their bet by using a lot of yeast. If they claim they can tell a difference, who can say with certainty that they cannot?

But I believe their claims of a taste difference are at least overstated, and none of the folks who say they can tell have ever shown me a blind taste test that supports their claims. More importantly, though, I'd assert that if there is a noticeable taste of yeast in their bread, then they may be using too much yeast anyway. A lean dough that's intended for a 2 hour bulk fermentation (assuming the use of a pre-ferment of some sort) needs only about 0.4% instant dry yeast to make that happen.

Bakers who don't weigh their yeast might use all 7 grams in one packet of instant yeast to leaven a pound of flour, when they really only need 2 grams to do that. The fresh yeast equivalent would be 5-6 grams, but those foil covered cubes you see weigh around 56g, and the "recommended" amount from Red Star is a third of that (roughly 18g) to leaven one pound of flour. In my experience, that's 3 times as much yeast as you need for a 2-hour bulk fermented baguette dough made from one pound (454 grams) of flour.

Enriched doughs like brioche need triple the amount of yeast that a lean dough uses, but in this case the sugar, eggs, and butter in the dough will usually mask any differences you might detect in yeast flavor.

Understand that I'm not against using fresh yeast. If it's easily available and very fresh (within 3wks of date of manufacture), I wouldn't hesitate to use it. I have used it professionally for years and years -- just as I've used instant and active dry. But I wouldn't pay more for it, or go to heroic measures to have it shipped to me.

For home bakers, there's a misplaced fascination with fresh yeast, I think, based upon the determined use of it by many pros, and the scarcity of it at the consumer level. Home bakers might point to that and think that THIS is the secret to fine baking, when there really is no secret. It's still all about mastering long, cool fermentations, as you well know.

I agree with Dan, I've never tasted any difference between fresh and dry yeast, only difference is fresh yeast spoils quickly, costs more, takes more space, I see only disadvantages. However, all bakers in France use fresh yeast.

At school to teach how yeast hates salt they put a block of yeast on top of heap of salt. Half an hour later the whole block of yeast desintegrates into a puddle. It's pretty scary and after that you usually get the reflex to keep them away from each other.

But as it's been said before, it's mainly about the water, so with dry yeast it doesn't matter really. But I'd say it's a good reflex to always put yeast and salt on either side of the mixing bowl, even if it's just to keep the legend going. Plus you need something to tell off apprenctice and that's always a good reason to shout:

Last Friday I made 6 loaves of Italian bread in two batches. I got on a real roll on the second batch of dough and had a bowl on the scales and weighed out the yeast, sugar, and water. Went back to the recipe and with out thinking added a tablespoon of salt to the water!! I was a bit "miffed" but thought, instead of throwing it out, lets see what happens! Well long story short, the ADY worked up just about as fast as the first batch of yeast! The dough doubled in size in the same amount of time as the first batch too. I don't think I'll ever worry about the "salt/yeast" thing again. I'll not add it to the water intentionally but I won't worry like I did about keeping the separate either.

Hello Dan, Thanks for your comments! I have read your book from cover to cover in bed as nighttime literature. My wife sometimes think I am bit of a bread nerd, but shes loves baking too, so I am not the only one in the house. I enjoy reading about bread and all the theory and angles towards bread making.

The oven is almost completely sealed and the steam vents are closed during the first 20 minutes of baking. Even with 6 loafs in the oven the glass does not fog up. Perhaps because the oven and the (small, 5 inch in diameter) glass has been heated up thouroughy for 2 hours?

Lindy, both of my ovens are electric. I plug the vent holes with a bath towel during the steam cycle. Mini Oven thinks that the seals between the double glass window are probably not tight, letting the steam migrate into the space between the two panes of glass. The outer layer being the cool side condenses the steam into water vapor. Sounds logical to me.

and amazing web site! Loved looking at the trifles! They are one of my favorite deserts. If you ever get to the big island here in Hawaii, I've got a spare bedroom for you and yours. It may cost a few bread baking lessons though!!!

I've been using some formulas that all for an autolyse but the yeast is already in it--only the salt is added after the autolyse. Is that a traditional method, or is the more traditional method depicted here, where salt and yeast are added after the autolyse?

The shaping method was interesting (less tight and firm than I would expect) but it results in a beautifully formed loaf! Just lovely! I hope it tasted as good as it looked.

All the books I have read on this matter describe adding the yeast and salt after the autolyse when they mention something about yeast and salt. My bible 'Bread of Hamelman' (I just double checked) adds the yeast after the autolyse stage although some yeast from the preferment is ofcourse present. I also just checked Dan DiMuzio's 'Bread baking' but he does not mention explicitly in what order to add yeast and salt when using an autolyse stage.

I have found out, that a sloppy shaping gives me a more airy bread with bigger holes. The tighter I shape the more tight the crumb becomes. Also I only use a 20 minute final proofing so I try to keep as much air in the dough as possible.

From one filmaker and bread baker to another...great job on the video! I want the soundtrack too. I loved watching your folding and shaping techniques. And your oven spring time lapse was fantastic to see!

...from the album "Bakerman". Thanks for the video Pipo, it was entertaining, informative and educational. I'm going to try to incorporated some of your techniques into my next loaf. And we like the same music.

Thank you all, for the nice comments! This fall I was in France for 3 weeks and saldy I have to say the bread in our holiday region rated from very bad to excellent. Lots of bakeries make over inflated bagettes without any taste. It weighs almost nothing, it costs almost nothing and it tastes like almost nothing. But... When you hit a good bakery, it is like shopping in heaven. Nice tartles, wood burning ovens, long fermented breads. Great! We have tried about 20 to 30 bakkeries in 3 weeks, and sadly only about 5 were great! This is the same here in The Netherlands, good bread is hard to find and only when you know where to look and the best baker in Amsterdam, in our humble opinion, is from France.

Yep this is a very big problem in France, sadly there is a big demand for the cheap disgusting baguette, I have worked in such bakeries and I wouldn't take any bread home. Very sad. But they are starting to bake more and more "tradition" baguette, which is very good in my opignon, loosely shaped to keep initial fermentation bubbles in the dough.

But there's a huge gap between the basic village bakery and the wood oven organic bakery you can scarcely find around france.

While on our trip to the netherlands we were wondering if there would be a demand for good bread because my wife and myself are looking for opening a bakery somewhere in Europe and the Netherlands are kinda attracting us (except for the impossible to learn language :D)

Calvel recommends adding salt at the beginning of the mixing process and no later than 3 minutes into the process. While a later addition helps gluten bonds and dough stregnth, "there is such a great decline on the quality of the taste of bread produced that it might be considered a general disaster."

He recommends this regardless of the mixing method used.

I've noticed a significant increase in aroma and flavor since following Calvel's advice.

Thank you for posting that comment from Calvel's Taste of Bread. I think the myth about salt and yeast being intolerant of each other has caused this concern for adding salt later. Adding salt in the beginning helps insure that it gets distributed through out the dough and evenly flavoring the mix. Calvel made a strong statement about this and I believe he is correct.

I'm still new enough to baking to make lots of mistakes. Thank goodness they haven't been so bad I couldn't eat the results. I got carried away one morning and was mixing the ADY yeast into the water with a bit of sugar and looked at the recipe and with out thinking added the salt to the mixture! I started to put it down the drain when I thought I'd leave it alone to see what it would do. I came back to it about 15 minutes later and found the yeast just as active as if there wasn't and salt added!

I don't go out of my way to try the same thing again but I don't worry about the salt and yeast thing any more!

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